This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.
Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-05-29
Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.
This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.
This table covers all strays and RTHs. Animals classified as Unweaned are excluded from stray and RTH calculations. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.
When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are slightly lower than the HASS average, which are at about 30% RTH rate (for dogs), and show a small decline in 2021 compared to previous years.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 763 | 9 | 0.01 |
| Cat | 2020 | 716 | 13 | 0.02 |
| Cat | 2021 | 307 | 7 | 0.02 |
| Dog | 2019 | 1906 | 501 | 0.26 |
| Dog | 2020 | 1424 | 388 | 0.27 |
| Dog | 2021 | 703 | 156 | 0.22 |
This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field, using the intake subtype field and counting anything with the word ‘field’ in it. Additionally, we also look at the return rate in the field vs that in the shelter, using the outcome subtype field. Cats are excluded because there are very few of them.
The table shows that in 2019 there were 1105 strays coming in from the field, of which 123 were returned in the field (11%) and an additional 216 were returned from the shelter (20%), leading to a total of 31% return rate for field intakes. In 2020 this rate was 34% and in 2021 it was 33%, which are both higher than the overall RTH rate shown in the previous tab. This suggests that the RTH of over-the-counter dogs would be lower (next tab).
| Year | Strays | RTH_Subtype | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1105 | Field RTH | 123 | 0.11 |
| 2019 | 1105 | Shelter RTH | 216 | 0.20 |
| 2020 | 803 | Field RTH | 106 | 0.13 |
| 2020 | 803 | Shelter RTH | 171 | 0.21 |
| 2021 | 286 | Field RTH | 33 | 0.12 |
| 2021 | 286 | Shelter RTH | 60 | 0.21 |
This shows the numbers only for strays that were public drop offs (anything that does not have field in the subtype). Indeed, the rates are slightly lower than field intakes for dogs across all years, and has been slowly decreasing from 20% to 18% to 15%.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 748 | 8 | 0.01 |
| Cat | 2020 | 703 | 11 | 0.02 |
| Cat | 2021 | 304 | 7 | 0.02 |
| Dog | 2019 | 801 | 162 | 0.20 |
| Dog | 2020 | 621 | 111 | 0.18 |
| Dog | 2021 | 417 | 63 | 0.15 |
These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.
Despite the zig-zags, the RTH rate for dogs seems to be slowly improving from Jan 2019 to May 2020, and since then it has been slowly decreasing.
This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.
Dog numbers post May 2020 were lower than before, so it is interesting that it also seemed to have been harder to achieve a similar RTH rate when there were fewer animals coming in – we would love to hear how this played out in your experience.
The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 14 days for dogs and 10 for cats when looking at the average.
That means that every successful RTH saves 14 days of care on average at Pasco County Animal Services, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.
This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of 30$, if 250 more dogs were returned home in 2021, it would have saved Pasco County Animal Services about $105,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.
| Species | Outcome | Count | Average_Length_Of_Stay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | Other Outcomes | 1468 | 12.54 |
| Cat | RTO | 29 | 2.10 |
| Dog | Other Outcomes | 2894 | 15.96 |
| Dog | RTO | 1045 | 1.74 |
The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.
The data in this section includes stray animals for which found addresses were present. Out of all strays in the data, only 39 had a found location of the shelter address, which is a reasonable percentage, but about 2000 animals had unusable found locations for mapping – primarily street names with no number or intersection. These had to be removed, so the mapping below only shows those animals who did have workable data. Fewer animals were removed because their found location included landmarks (like ‘railway’) and highways (which are harder to geocode for Google, apparently). Animals outside Pasco County were also removed for simplicity of mapping (~100).
After this filtering, the data below (number of strays, rate of RTH, RTH gap) is shown for 2494 dogs of which 599 were RTH. This filtering was harsher for cats as it left only 161, which is too little to make a reliable map.
Note that the area with the highest stray intake also has among the lowest RTH rate (top right).
This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly low in the areas with the highest stray intakes, it looks pretty similar to the first map.
Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.
| Found.Location | Count |
|---|---|
| Hicks Rd and Hudson Ave Hudson Florida | 25 |
| between markham street and loy street NPR Florida | 17 |
| 301 AND COMMER Lacoochee Florida | 12 |
| Celeste Drive and Congress Street New Port Richey (City) Florida | 12 |
| Oleander Dr NPR Wesley Chapel Florida | 12 |
| 54 and 41 Land O Lakes Florida | 11 |
| 6934 calvert ave NPR Florida | 10 |
| 9900 Grace Dr Port Richey Florida | 10 |
| Lock St and 12th St Dade City Florida | 10 |
| HUNT CLUB LANE 9035 Port Richey Florida | 9 |
This map shows different demographic information for Pasco County.
One example of using both the census data and shelter data is below – there is a clear positive correlation between stray intakes and the percentage of people living under the 100% poverty line.
We could add this upon getting an Intake with Results Extended report, which would have the outcome addresses for animals (all other personal information there can be filtered out by us or before sending).
In this version, we did not have microchip information yet, which we could obtain through a more extended report (Intake with Results Extended). However, since the subtype fields are used to separate animals with/out ids, we used this field to look at ID prevalence and how it affects RTH rates.
The following table breaks it down by species. There are more dogs and coming in microchipped (9.7%) than cats (0.2%), but both percentages are very low.
| Species | Identification | Count | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | FALSE | 8125 | 99.8% |
| Cat | TRUE | 19 | 0.2% |
| Dog | FALSE | 7273 | 90.3% |
| Dog | TRUE | 782 | 9.7% |
| Other | FALSE | 99 | 100% |
This comparison is stronger after also making sure animals compared are similar on other characteristics, such as intake condition and age. But to get a first impression, for cats the RTH rate with chips is 37% compared to 1% without one, whereas for dogs, there is a 56% RTH rate for dogs with microchips vs 14% without chips.
The difference is obviously high, but it is worth also thinking about what might make the ‘yes’ category be at 56% as opposed to 100% (since there is presumably an owner), such as owners refusing, fees, wrong details on the chip, etc.
| Species | Identification | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | FALSE | 8125 | 65 | 1% |
| Cat | TRUE | 19 | 7 | 37% |
| Dog | FALSE | 7273 | 1016 | 14% |
| Dog | TRUE | 782 | 440 | 56% |
| Other | FALSE | 99 | 3 | 3% |
This section shows the microchip rate (% of animals who came in with a chip) from each Census tract, as well as the number of animals coming with without a microchip from each Census tract.
the following map shows the proportion of animals who came with an ID. It looks like the areas that stood out for intake volume also have pretty low ID prevalence – so the next map, showing the ID Gap, will be pretty similar to the intake map.
The following map shows the number of strays that came in without an ID from each area. The areas that stand out tend to overlap with those with the higher stray intake.
Found location - as mentioned above, many animals had to be removed from mapping because of unusable found locations – primarily street names with no number or intersection. This means the mapping shown above is incomplete. Using name+number, block numbers, or intersections would improve mapping abilities.
It is noteworthy that you track animals coming with/out ID and would love to hear why you chose to capture that in the intake subtype field which also contains additional information rather than in a field of its own.
Other things we could show if we had the data for it:
Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.